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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24252451">Archive of the Dead</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mister_Fox/pseuds/Mister_Fox'>Mister_Fox</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Bleach, The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Established Relationship, M/M, Resurrection, Temporary Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 21:35:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,697</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24252451</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mister_Fox/pseuds/Mister_Fox</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Statement of Kurosaki Ichigo, regarding the resurrection and monstrous status of Urahara Kisuke, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute.</p><p> </p><p>UraIchi Week 2020 - Day 1, Resurection</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Kurosaki Ichigo/Urahara Kisuke, Urahara Kisuke/Kurotsuchi Mayuri/Kurosaki Ichigo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>UraIchi Week 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Archive of the Dead</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>[Click.]</p><p>Statement of Kurosaki Ichigo, regarding the resurrection and monstrous status of Urahara Kisuke, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute.</p><p>Statement begins.</p><p>Urahara Kisuke died. In the explosion meant to stop the Unknowing, he died.</p><p>He didn’t tell me where he was going, that morning. He didn’t tell me he might not come back when he left. I’ve been wondering, the past days, wondering if there was anything he did before leaving, anything unusual, anything that I could have seen and recognised as a potential goodbye. There was nothing.</p><p>And Kisuke didn’t come home.</p><p>I sat there in the hospital at the side of a body that was dead save for the fact that there is an impossible amount of activity in the brain, a body whose heart doesn’t beat and whose lungs don’t move and that is dead. I sat there because I didn’t know how to pick up all the things in our shared home that belong to him, and put them away. </p><p>I should have let go, I know that now. I shouldn’t have tried to save him.</p><p>But I didn’t think- </p><p>I knew him, who he was, at his core. </p><p>I didn’t know, I didn’t <em>think</em> this would happen.</p><p>I just wanted to get him back.</p><p>I don’t work in the Institute, but I do know a great deal about what goes, well, bump in the night. The privilege of having Kisuke bring his work home with him, and having to listen to him do his recordings in the living room.</p><p>Usually just the disproven statements, which are… well, in quality, anything from a rehearsed novel to drunk rambling to some really weird creepypastas.</p><p>But every once in a while I’d hear a garbled computer noise, a sigh, the click of the tape recorded, and he’d start over whatever he was recording.</p><p>A true statement.</p><p>I liked to think that they were just good, spooky stories. I knew they weren’t, not really, but it was easier to just <em>pretend</em>. They were always more interesting to listen to like that.</p><p>There were a couple statements, a while back.</p><p>Statements about death, and people who <em>could not die</em>. Not in the way Kisuke lay, dead except for his thoughts, but people who walked and talked and lived. If that’s the right word. Statements about Avatars of the End.</p><p>You can probably guess where this is going.</p><p>I didn’t use the Skin book- even with the little I knew, I was aware that <em>that</em> was not what I wanted for Kisuke. I wouldn’t have even known where to start looking for it anyway, and, well, the bloody thing needs sanskrit and practice to operate. Not something I could get on short notice.</p><p>I didn’t think I could try and find one of those who won a game against chess, didn’t think I could win a game on the behalf of someone else.</p><p>Brookwood Cemetery, otherwise known as the London Necropolis, is the largest cemetery in the UK, and one of the largest in Europe.<em> A city of the dead.</em> What better place?</p><p>I’m not going to say what I did there on the thirty-first of december, stealing the body from the hospital. Not because of any concern about legality. Honestly, I don’t even care about that right now. I just don’t want anyone who hears this to try and repeat it.</p><p>It’s… not going to give you the results you want.</p><p>I know that now.</p><p>I wonder, sometimes, if maybe I did something wrong, if I could have done something better, if it would have worked out if I had known more. But I doubt it. These powers don’t exist to do good, to help.</p><p>But at the time- at the time, it looked like it worked just fine. </p><p>Kisuke had woken up, and he was- fine. He looked fine, and we were both so <em>relieved</em>. So happy.</p><p>I brought him home. Nearly frightened Mayuri half to death when he saw us in the kitchen.</p><p>With how happy we all were to have Kisuke back, and the mess of explaining to the hospital that Kisuke just… woke up from his coma after I kinda kidnapped him, I guess I didn’t… notice that something was wrong.</p><p>Not at first.</p><p>It took me a while to notice that Kisuke stopped… looking at people. It wasn’t, it wasn’t big, at first. He stopped meeting eyes, just stared slightly off somewhere, I guess at the forehead, the ears, just not… eyes. Then he started avoiding looking at faces, which… was, well, he stopped looking at me too.</p><p>Then he stopped looking at people almost completely.</p><p>In hindsight, hoping that it was just connected to the Institute, to the nightmare realm he had spent time in, the Beholding- was stupidly optimistic of me. </p><p>But I was determined to <em>ignore</em> anything wrong, anything going <em>weird.</em></p><p>We were walking in the park one day in March, getting some fresh air, when Kisuke accidentally looked at someone. </p><p>I knew he looked at someone, because he did that <em>wince</em>, that wince that I was, by that point, very good at not pointing out to him, and he was very good at hiding from anyone who didn’t spend so much time with him.</p><p>He asked me to stay back, and let him speak to one of the strangers in the park.</p><p>I didn’t hear what he was saying to the lady feeding her lunch sandwich to the ducks. I saw her frown, shake her, almost start to get angry. And then she looked in his eyes. </p><p>She flinched back, violently. Then nodded.</p><p>Kisuke came over to me. He looked uncertain. </p><p>I asked him what he said to the woman.</p><p>He said that he told her that she was going to die tomorrow, that he just… couldn’t not warn her, not when her death was so <em>close</em>. He had to <em>try</em>.</p><p>I looked back at the woman, who was now eating the meant-for-ducks-sandwich with the deliberacy of someone doing their best to enjoy something before they couldn’t do it anymore, texting someone on her phone.</p><p>She took a big bite out of it, swallowed, and… started choking.</p><p>The paramedics that arrived told us that she had apparently had an allergy to something in the sandwich that wasn’t meant to be in it. No one around had an epi-pen. There was nothing anyone could have done.</p><p>Kisuke wasn’t in a very good state when I got him home, but he didn’t explain anything. He said he’d rather only say it once, and do it somewhere private.</p><p>After I resurrected him, he’s become... a bit like the Book of the Dead. When he looks at a person, he knows how, when, where, <em>why</em> they will die. If he tries to change something, actively interfere- the circumstances will change.</p><p>He just… hoped that telling someone wouldn’t have the same repercussions, but hadn’t wanted to, well test it on anyone with any time left to live. That it would just.. frighten them, and help them avoid the death but they would still fear it. The woman saw her own death when their eyes met. She became <em>afraid.</em></p><p>He’d hoped that it would be enough.</p><p>But we both saw that…. well, it hadn’t been enough.</p><p>I didn’t ask if he could see my death too.</p><p>I didn’t ask if <em>he</em> had one, anymore.</p><p>Kisuke was still working for the Institute, something about not being sure that the rules didn’t apply to him any more - and not wanting someone else to be stuck in there in his place.</p><p>I think he was busier messing up the organisation all over again than trying to actually sort the place out, though. Restore it to the mess he inherited from the previous Archivist.</p><p>Other than work though, he started going out even less.</p><p>I’m not sure he even went anywhere that <em>wasn’t</em> work.</p><p>I could understand that, not wanting to learn any more gruesome, grim fates.</p><p>Things were stable, for a while.</p><p>I ignored when he would come home far too late at night, dripping wet and smelling like the Thames, or in singed clothes, or in stained or dusty or dirty clothes, but whole and unharmed.</p><p>When he got tired and pale and thin, I tried to tell him to rest and eat more food. Although we both knew that’s not what he <em>needed</em> to eat to be healthy.</p><p>Life went on. Things seemed to settle into a new normal.</p><p>Until they didn’t.</p><p>He left a note in the kitchen, hastily scrawled on a napkin. It said that he had to go, that being around him would kill us. That if he didn’t speak of the deaths- then the lives around him would burn down like candles until he did. And he refused to make that choice. He would rather wait until the End killed him with hunger, and hope too many strangers from whatever town would be the closest didn’t die. That there was a limit to the range of it. </p><p>And in the meanwhile, he’d try to find a way out faster.</p><p>He wrote to us that he loved us so very, very much. That he hoped we would be okay. To watch out for the Beholding and the Lonely as they would try to feast on the misery.</p><p>He didn’t say that I shouldn’t have brought him back. </p><p>But I knew he meant it.</p><p>I knew I should have just… let him go. But I loved him too much to do it. Too much to let the opportunity slip out my hands when I knew there was something I might be able to do.</p><p>This was months ago.</p><p>I know he’s not dead yet. Still out there. Still hurting because I couldn’t let him go.</p><p>There is one thing that is good at killing monsters. The Hunt. With the right weapon, the right Hunter… maybe. Maybe the Hunt can deal with Death.</p><p>I have to try to fix what I’ve done.</p><p>Mayuri, I’m leaving you a copy of this recording.</p><p>If I don’t come back- I’m so sorry. Don’t let the Lonely and Desolation get to you. Be safe.</p><p>Statement ends.</p><p>[Click.]</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Comments and kudos are welcome and much appreciated, and help me write!</p><p> </p><p>Here's a link to <a href="https://discordapp.com/invite/ADFnKTZ#_=_">Cywscross' UraIchi Discord Server</a>!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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